March 07, 2012

1) A few days ago, my brother who lives in a faraway foreign country emails me to tell me that there's a new L.A. band I should check out called Montë Mar, whose lead vocalist was a superstar guitarist at our high school, who later went on to perform with Michael Buble. A day later, a representative of same said band emails to me say that MM has a new video out for "Brown to Grey", performed live and outside (looks like somewhere in the Santa Monica mountains) for In the Open Sessions. MM sound nothing like Michael Buble, and have a residency on each Monday this month at the Silverlake Lounge.

2) There's a new video out from Shadow Shadow Shade for "Will Hold Still", which consists of one of the racier Busby Berkeley choregraphed bits I've ever seen on the internet (argualy, slightly NSFW for a few seconds):

3) L.A.'s Nite Jewel's new electropopy video for "One Second of Love" appears to depict a sort of dance contest performed by three identically dressed girls, for three not identically dressed girls sitting on a couch. Well at least that's how it starts, later a woman throws up pearls and another pulls an octopus tentacle out of her mouth. And there's a half man/half animal minotaur looking thing that seems to be playing an important role in the drama. And much of it is shot with a very wide angle lens. This song would have been just as appealing to me now, as it would have 10, 20 or maybe even 30 years ago (quite a bit!) According to the horse's own mouth, the video presents "a conflation of notions of transgression, excess, asceticism, and conformity."

4) RFSL favorite The Lonely Wild perform a new song "Everything You Need" in a van for a series called Jam in the Van (totally safe for work!). We at the old RFSL website have been following these guys for a while (well over a year! -- check out this incredible twopart interview!) and they sound as good or better than ever. Including some very ambitious trumpet soloing around 2:50.

5) The somewhat obscure (even by L.A. standards) and very mysterious (by any standards) Inland Empire band Hippie Cream (whose videos have consistently amused me) have released a short film/extended music video called Antique Imagination, to accompany their album of the same name. It's about an "aging science fiction author [like Kilgore Trout?] who buys a mobility scooter and goes in search of his lost imagination." It stars Walter Savell.

6) Here's a short film recently released by what appears to be an Icelandic film student, soundtracked by the very popular, and very talented Icelandic band For a Minor Reflection. The song is called "Ókyrrð" and is off of their album Reistu þig við, sólin er komin á loft.

Got anything new for VFSL to post next week? Can you believe this weather?